Aspiring a Paradigm Shift in the Current Understanding of Oral Health Promotion by Testing the Possibility of Deriving Requisite Manpower Using Basic Clinical Data: An Epidemiological Investigation

Introduction: Majority of rural dental outreach programs focus on screening the subjects attending the programs and providing oral health education for them. There has only been limited emphasis on the provision of care as a part of the outreach activities for the geographically disadvantaged rural population. The objective of this study is to check whether the basic clinical data as collected in the form of number of decayed teeth can be a valid and reliable predictor in calculation of requisite time for provision of restorative services by developing a predicting equation from the data obtained on 400 subjects in outreach activities and subsequently testing the predicting general linear equation for predictive accuracy. Materials and Methods: The number of decayed teeth in each of the participants was recorded along with collection of demographic data from the study participants. Data obtained from the 400 participants was used to generate a predicting equation after running a backward stepwise multiple linear regression. The equation was subsequently tested among a subsample of 200 participants from the exploratory sample and an independent validatory sample of 200. SPSS version 20 software, multiple linear regression, Wilcoxon signed rank test, Mann Whitney U test were used in data analysis. Results: Number of decayed teeth was observed to be a single, significant predictor of the man hours required in provision of restorative care. The predicting equation generated had good predictive accuracy and predictive stability as observed from the non-significant differences between the requisite time calculated using the predicting equation and that clinically determined by the calibrated examiner among both the subsample of exploratory sample and the validatory sample. Conclusion: The predicting equation generated in this study accurately and consistently estimated the requisite man hours necessary for provision of restorative oral health care in outreach programs.